Name: French Peas
Ingredients: 1 can French peas; 4 tablespoons butter; Salt to taste; Paprika to taste

Why it works: Peas and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,887 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

French Peas

Ingredients

1 can French peas
4 tablespoons butter
Salt to taste
Paprika to taste

Directions

Prepare

Drain the can of French peas and rinse them with cold water.

Cook

In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.
Add the peas and cook for 10 minutes.
Season with salt and paprika to taste.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,887 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

French peas: Form the main body of the dish, providing texture and substance once cooked.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and helping the peas feel silky.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.